The dispersal of educated professionals in remote work-friendly jobs from cities out into suburban, exurban, and rural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic helped stem the bleeding for Democrats in the House in 2022, according to a new analysis by George Mason University political scientist Justin Gest in Politico. And yeah, Gest also mentions the disproportionately high deaths from the virus among Republican voters after the vaccines became widely available.
“Data from the U.S. Postal Service and Census Bureau shows how the pandemic drove urban professionals who were able to work remotely – disproportionately Democrats – out of coastal, progressive cities to seek more space or recreational amenities in the nation’s suburbs and Sun Belt. This moved liberals out of electoral districts where Democrats reliably won by large margins into many purple regions that had the potential to swing with just small changes to the map. And because partisan gerrymanderers carved up new districts before the extent of pandemic mobility data was understood, they could not neutralize the population shifts,” Gest writes.